# Read the first page of Devil's Day by Andrew Michael Hurley Read the opening of Devil's Day by Andrew Michael Hurley free, no signup. How far a farming family will go to keep tradition. - Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/devils-day-andrew-michael-hurley - Genre: Folk horror - Year: 2018 - ISBN: 9781328489845 - Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781328489883&s=read-page - Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781328489845 - Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781328489845 ## The opening One late October day, just over a century ago, the farmers of the Endlands went to gather their sheep from the moors as they did every autumn. Only this year, while the shepherds were pulling a pair of wayward lambs from a peat bog, the Devil killed one of the ewes and tore off her fleece to hide himself among the flock. Down in the farmlands, he flitted from one house to the next, too crafty to be caught, only manifest in what he infected. He was the maggot in the eye of the good dog, the cancer that rotted the ram’s gonads, the blood in the baby’s milk. The stories began to reach the ears of the villagers in Underclough further up the valley, and while they were not surprised or sorry to hear that the heathen folk of the Endlands were being persecuted by the Owd Feller, they petitioned their minister to do something for their own sake. But he was frail and elderly and, unwilling to tackle the Devil on his own, he asked the bishop for an assistant, by which he meant a substitute. The priest who arrived with his crucifix and aspergillum was a young man sceptical of his summons; he would think of himself as a missionary, he decided, a bringer of light to this dark valley. These people were no better than the gullible savages of the colonies who found spirits in everything from the clouds to the dirt. They deserved his pity. But when he saw the animals decaying before his eyes and the blood dribbling from the wet-nurse’s teat, his nerve faltered and the Devil brought a blizzard to the valley that lasted for days. The cottages in the village choked under drifts that grew to the windows and stores of wood and peat that should have lasted all winter were quickly gone. Across the bridge, the church was lightless and cowed and in the graveyard the dead were buried a second time as a bigger swell of snow blew down the valley and across the farmlands. Man and beast were forced to share the same warmth. Piglets and gun dogs slept on the hearth rugs. The tup steamed in the kitchen. Days were late to lighten and quick to end and people began to die. The older folk first, coughing up their lungs in shreds like tomato skins, and then the children, burning with fever. But the worst of it, the very worst of it, they said, was that it was impossible to know who the Devil would visit next. He left no footprints in the snow, there was no knock at the door. It was as if, they said, he was the air itself. The stuff they breathed. The villagers of Underclough blamed the farmers of the Endlands and the farmers began to wonder if they’d brought it upon themselves; if there had been some sign that they’d missed and left to fester like an open wound. Hadn’t a jackdaw flown into the Curwens’ house one evening in the summer and clubbed itself to death on the walls? Hadn’t the Dyers’ children seen a hare digging up bones in the graveyard? Then there was that warm Saturday in September when Joe Pentecost, drunk on port and pride, dropped his glass as he made the toast at his daughter’s wedding breakfast. They’d all laughed at him, forgiven him his moment of clumsiness and thought nothing of it. Yet now, they argued over the ritual that would have sponged away the bad luck with the spilled wine. ## Books with a similar feel - [Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward](https://uncovered.ink/read/nowhere-burning-catriona-ward.md) - [Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda](https://uncovered.ink/read/woman-eating-claire-kohda.md) - [A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay](https://uncovered.ink/read/a-head-full-of-ghosts-paul-tremblay.md) - [The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-ballad-of-black-tom-victor-lavalle.md) - [The Reformatory by Tananarive Due](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-reformatory-tananarive-due.md) - [The Shining by Stephen King](https://uncovered.ink/read/the-shining-stephen-king.md) --- Source: Uncovered (https://uncovered.ink). A short sample shown for reading and discovery. Rights holders can request removal at https://uncovered.ink/takedown.